Russian government edits Wikipedia on flight MH17

A political battle has broken out on Wikipedia over an entry relating to the
crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, with the Russian government
reportedly removing sections which accuse it of providing "terrorists"
with missiles that were used to down the civilian airliner

People walk among the debris at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, near the village of GrabovoPhoto: AP

A political battle has broken out on Wikipedia over an entry relating to the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, with the Russian government reportedly removing sections which accuse it of providing "terrorists" with missiles that were used to down the civilian airliner.

A Twitter bot which monitors edits made to the online encyclopaedia from Russian government IP addresses (unique numbers relating to certain computers or networks) has spotted that changes are being made to a page relating to the crash.

It appears that an internet user from within the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) changed a Russian language version of a page listing civil aviation accidents to say that "The plane [flight MH17] was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers".

That edit replaced text – written just an hour earlier - which said MH17 had been shot down "by terrorists of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic with Buk system missiles, which the terrorists received from the Russian Federation."

All edits to Wikipedia are permanently logged, with the username and IP address being stored along with the changes they have made.

An automated Twitter bot called congress-edits was created to monitor for changes made from US Congress computers and immediately tweet them. The source code powering that project was released to the public, allowing the creation of RUGovEdits which performs a similar role in Russia.

A tweet today from that account, translated into English, says: "Wikipedia article List of aircraft accidents in civil aviation has been edited by RTR [another name for VGTRK]".

Flight MH17 crashed in Ukraine on Thursday, on the border with Russia, with 298 people on board. There were no survivors.

Ukraine's interior ministry says the plane was shot down by a missile, while President Obama on Friday afternoon also said that it was likely to have been targeted by separatists.

Mr Obama said that the US does not “want to get ahead of the facts” but added: “A group of separatists cannot shoot down military planes without sophisticated equipment - and that is coming from Russia.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied any responsibility, however, telling advisers on Friday that: “certainly, the government over whose territory it occurred is responsible for this terrible tragedy.”

If the Russian government has indeed edited the page it will be far from the first time that politically or commercially embarrassing Wikipedia updates have been exposed.

In 2006 United States Congressional staff were found to have edited articles about members of Congress, Microsoft once offered an engineer money to update articles on two competing standards, PR firm Bell Pottinger tweaked articles about its clients and, in 2012, MPs were discovered to have asked their staff to remove criticism about them.